Stuck in purgatory? Training for Warriors Portland

Purgatory is:

5:59AM. Your alarm goes off and you roll over and hit snooze. You have 3 minutes to decide whether you’re on your feet and moving with enough time to work out, eat breakfast, and shower before making it to the office.

You are tired. Seems like you are MORE sleepy now than when you went to bed.

How is that possible?

You know that you’ll feel better when you wake up, have breakfast and get some exercise. Of course you KNOW that. Usually.

But you could sleep in an extra hour if you didn’t have this pesky exercise commitment, and who knows, maybe THIS time you’ll actually feel less sleepy after sleep. The exercise plan isn’t even working that well…as evidenced by how terrible you feel now, right? If you were really getting in better shape wouldn’t everything be easier?

Purgatory is where you are now.

It is inside your mind, where your doubts, fears and influences from the external are setting upon you. Your plan wasn’t good enough and even if it was you don’t really want to change or achieve this. The timing is just not right. You couldn’t finish this project anyway, you’ve got too much to do and your follow through is suspect at times. You might actually be indifferent to the whole thing…

See how this travels from acute reasons to character flaws in a matter of moments? You don’t want to be trapped in your thoughts for long, I’m certain no good comes of it.

Purgatory is what I call the space between goals and commitment.

Once you’ve identified a goal and before you actually act on it, you need commitment. Without commitment, you can still back out without “really” failing.

Once you’ve committed, you can truly succeed, but you can also learn, stumble, struggle and fail (all of which are helpful to the process of growing as a human). Commitment is accepting that you will move forward no matter what. There is no way you are NOT going to execute your plan.

Once you’ve committed, you aren’t beholden to perfectionism.

You may show up late, but you don’t call in sick. You look for ways forward, not for ways out of your challenge. You publicly reach out for support to friends, family, colleagues, peers and strangers who can help you. You make it happen.

Magic things happen when you commit to something. Instead of getting distracted, you happily refuse to partake of activities that would take you off course. You happily say no to work that pulls you away from your mission, from people who drain your batteries and most of all from purgatory.

When doubts and fears surface in your mind, you give them a knowing nod on your way by. Perhaps your brain will always voice fears and rationales for turning back, but you have taken note of all worthy objections a long time ago.